Many people think, that laptops are not overclockable, but that is not true, at least not for mobile video cards. It is a bit harder to change clocks, since these settings could not be accessed through your video card's control panel, but it is possible and i will exactly show you howto do it. This guide is based on overclocking a Geforce 9600M GT, but other Geforce Mobile video cards should overclock in same or similar manner.

We will be overclocking with a program called RivaTuner. It can be downloaded from it's homepage at Guru of 3D.

1. Install RivaTuner and click "Yes" when at the end of installation program offers you to install updates. If you are using Windows Vista, you will have to restart your computer before installation of RivaTuner and disable driver signature enforcement (Tap F8 key while your computer is booting up and instead of going directly into Windows, it will offer you "Advanced boot Options". Simply choose "Disable Driver Signature Enforcement" and this is it. By doing this, you are disabling driver signature enforcement only until the next pc restart, so you are not open to any risks).

2. Run RivaTuner and before changing any clock settings, go to "Power user" tab. By default "Protect database entries" is on - disable it.
3. Then click on the "+" at "RivaTuner\NVIDIA\Overclocking" and change values of the following variables to "1" by clicking on them with your right mouse button and choosing the glowing bulb: EnableLowPower3DControl, EnablePerfLevelForcing, UserAlternateStartupDaemon.
4. Still under "Power user" tab, click on the "+" at "RivaTuner/Overclocking/Global", change "MaxClockLimit" and "MinClockLimit" to "100" by double clicking the "Value" field and typing it in manually. This will allow you to push shaders clock higher.
5. Go to "Main" tab and click on "Customize" button under "Driver settings"; then click on "System settings" icon.

6. This is where magic happens. Check "Enable low-level hardware overclocking" to begin. As you can see, here are three sliders and a bunch of other options. In the top-right corner choose "performance 3D", since we are overclocking to achieve maximum performance in 3D games.
7. The top slider changes your video card's GPU clock, middle one changes clock of shaders and bottom one is for changing the clock of video card's memory. Be careful when overclocking - rise frequencies in small steps until you reach the limit (check stability often by running a demanding 3D application). I recommend you to check online, how much your video card overclocks on average, so that you will know your approximate end frequencies. After each changing of frequencies, simply click "Apply".
8. In my experience, you should "Force constant performance level" to "performance 3D" if you want your frequencies to stick, but this means that your card will be running at full speed the whole time, so you might want to test it out.
9. When you have found the highest stable clocks, you can check "Apply overclocking at Windows startup" and live happily ever after.

As you can see, I was able to achieve a pretty impressive overclock with my Geforce 9600M GT DDR2 - with these frequencies it scores over 5000 points in 3dmark 06 coupled with P8400 Core 2 Duo processor. You can see, how the card scores at default and at overclocked settings on the chart to the right.

Overclocking your video card can seriously deminish battery life, so I would recommend it only to gamers or to those who never unplug their laptop's power cable.

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Comments (3)

• 2009-05-25 18:49:31 |81.193.31.xxx| Fox

  yeah I already tried...
  575/1475/500 and still crashes after some time

  =(

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• 2009-05-18 15:28:18 |SAdministrator| admin

  Overclock depends heavily on quality of your video card's chips. Maybe you just weren't as lucky when buyng your laptop... Did you try overclocking it to lower clocks than me? You should still be able to greatly improve your performance...

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• 2009-05-18 14:39:54 |85.241.171.xxx| Fox  - Overclock

  I have the same exact graphics card(DDR2 as well)...but i can't even change to those clocks without my pc crash =S

  Any more info on that?

  Btw I am using the same drivers

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